Page:Minnie Flynn (1925).pdf/141

 Her father was frightened, terribly frightened. "I hate to touch any more of that nest egg your mother and me have been savin'," he said in despair, "but if you've got to have it I guess I can't deny one of my own children. Wouldn't she be satisfied with five dollars, Minnie?"

They read the note over again and its businesslike tone worried them.

"I don't think so, papa. Eleanor's been awful good to me. I don't see how I'm goin' to stall her along."

After dinner Minnie went to Eleanor's boarding house to pay the debt in person. (Temporarily Eleanor was "residing with a refined German family" until she found an apartment to her liking, so she had told all her friends.)

She needn't have made any apologies to Minnie, for Minnie thought it was a palatial residence. . . and so near Riverside Drive! Just a little walk of two blocks or so and there you were on the Drive itself. Once she had hoped that the Flynns would be moving uptown into a classy brownstone front like that.

Eleanor was unfriendly only because she was worried. She accepted the ten dollars and asked to know specifically just when Minnie intended paying her the next instalment. The prospect of Minnie's work at the Biograph Studio held slight promise to Eleanor. Times were slack. The public was objecting because so many poor pictures had been foisted upon it. From one end of the country to the other they had set up a hue and cry, "Fewer and better pictures. . . ." All of the producing organizations were at a standstill. They were worrying over their output. . . . Meanwhile the wheels had ceased grinding and work had been suspended. Mutable as the tides these chaotic crises would come and go. . . . Always after the boom, the depression.